‘Vomiting of the mouth.’ GOP House members describe secret recording of House Speaker Bonnen

Presumptive Texas House Speaker Dennis Bonnen speaks about his new position, on Friday, Jan. 4, 2019, in Austin, TX.

Photo: Bob Owen, STAFF-photographer / San Antonio Express-News

AUSTIN — House Speaker Dennis Bonnen’s future as one of the state’s top three lawmakers is in jeopardy as his fellow Republicans report hearing him on a secret recording scheming with a political operative to unseat 10 members of the GOP caucus ahead of what’s expected to be the party’s most grueling campaign season in decades.

Republican lawmakers who heard a recording of a June meeting between Bonnen, Empower Texans CEO Michael Quinn Sullivan and House Republican Caucus Chairman Dustin Burrows, R- Lubbock, have described the conversation as “damaging,” “hurtful,” and “flat-out mean.”

“It’s pretty shocking. I’ll be honest with you. It is,” said Rep. Jonathan Stickland, R-Bedford. “There’s just frankly vomiting of the mouth, if you will, by these individuals, and you can’t help but just kind of cringe by some of the stuff I heard. ... It’s beneath the office, for sure.”

The bizarre meeting six weeks ago was secretly recorded by Sullivan and is being reviewed by select Republicans at a crucial time in the election cycle, as the party relies on leadership to raise large sums of money to help fend off Democrats eager to flip enough swing districts to win control of the Texas House.

“It diminishes Bonnen’s ability to fundraise,” said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University. “The Austin lobby donates to power and gives copious amounts of money to Bonnen because he is speaker. The greater the doubt about Bonnen’s future status as speaker, the less money he will be able to raise to try to maintain the GOP majority in the Texas House in next year’s election.”

The episode began to unfold last week when Sullivan accused Bonnen of offering his organization media credentials. Empower Texans has long sought the credentials, which give journalists access to the floor of the Texas House when the Legislature is in session and provide better access to lawmakers for interviews and follow-up questions. In the same meeting, Sullivan said Bonnen suggested Empower Texans — a group that has poured millions into pushing the Texas GOP further right — should campaign to unseat 10 moderate Republicans in the Texas House.

Bonnen has accused Sullivan of lying and denied providing him with a list of potential targets.

Sullivan disclosed Wednesday that he had made the secret recording — and threatened to make it public — as he and Bonnen gave different accounts of what happened at the meeting. He has offered to allow affected Republicans to listen to the audio in the presence of his lawyer.

The 10 lawmakers mentioned in the meeting have taken to calling themselves the X Men. They include Reps. Steve Allison of San Antonio, Trent Ashby of Lufkin, Ernest Bailes of Shepherd, Travis Clardy of Nacogdoches, Drew Darby of San Angelo, Kyle Kacal of College Station, Stan Lambert of Abilene, Tan Parker of Flower Mound, John Raney of College Station and Phil Stephenson of Wharton.

Nearly all of them are in safe Republican districts. Three of them — Clardy, Darby and Parker — ran for House speaker in 2018, but all dropped out shortly after Bonnen entered the race.

Clardylistened to the recording and confirmed the audio reveals that Burrows gave Sullivan the 10 names, suggesting they could be challenged in their primary elections without repercussions from Bonnen, who launched a multimillion dollar political action committee to support House Republicans. Clardy said there are comments on the recording that will be hurtful to some House members, but others will have to determine for themselves “what it means and how to take it and whether they will be able to move past it.”

For his part, Clardy said he has already moved past it and wants to talk to Bonnen and Burrows, with whom he has yet to speak since news of the meeting broke last week.

Stickland, a darling of Empower Texans who is not running for re-election and was not on the list, said he heard Bonnen offer media credentials to Sullivanon the recording. Stickland said Bonnen then sweetened the deal by offering to deny media credentials to political reporter Scott Braddock of the Quorum Report.

Stickland said he expects both Bonnen and Burrows to lose their leadership posts.

“I think this shatters trust and relationships at the most basic level in the Texas House. I will be shocked if either of them survive this,” he said. “I think this will upend Texas politics.”

Another GOP lawmaker, Rep. Steve Toth of The Woodlands, said he has also listened to the recording.

“What I derived from the audio tape — it’s very clear — is that Speaker Bonnen was not truthful about a list not being provided,” Toth told the Texas Tribune.

Sullivan said in a blog post that Bonnen gave “amusing (if slightly vulgar) comments” about Reps. Michelle Beckley, D-Carrollton, and Jon Rosenthal, D-Houston. He has denied Beckley’s request to listen to the audio, but Rosenthal said he’s uninterested in hearing the recording and sees the affair as a distraction. He is running for re-election in a district Republicans hope to win back.

“I haven’t asked. I’m not going to ask. I don’t care what they said,” Rosenthal said. Whatever Bonnen said about him “wouldn’t affect my relationship with the speaker.” He stopped short of saying he would vote for Bonnen again, saying he wants to focus on his re-election.

Bonnen has said he called the meeting to smooth over Sullivan, who has been attacking Bonnen and other GOP lawmakers for months over the past legislative session, saying they abandoned conservative issues such as abortion and gun rights. Bonnen called for Sullivan to release the full recording of the meeting, as have Democratic leaders such as Speaker Pro Tempore Joe Moody, D-El Paso.

“Having all the evidence is always the best way to sort things out. I agree w/@RepDennisBonnen and colleagues on both sides of the aisle that the entire recording should be released,” Moody said Thursday on Twitter.

Andrea Zelinski is a state bureau reporter focusing on education, politics, social issues and the courts. She previously covered the Tennessee legislature and local education for the Nashville Scene where she was news editor. She also wrote for the Nashville Post, the now defunct Nashville City Paper and TNReport news service, covered the Illinois statehouse and reported for the Associated Press and Small Newspaper Group. A Chicago-area native, she has a master’s degree in Public Affairs Reporting from the University of Illinois at Springfield and earned her undergraduate degree at Northeastern Illinois University.